


Give it time

by TheRatsAreListening



Category: Life Is Strange 2 (Video Game)
Genre: A therapy session after the Parting Ways ending, Angst, BUT ENJOY IT ANYWAY, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, [which is canon so suck on that], and there's no way for me to feel GOOD with any of my choices, guest appearance from Finn's nicknames for Sean cause i live for that stuff, like i did when it came to saving chloe, my hot take on this game is none of the endings are actually good, so i wrote this for myself to cope with the fact that even the "good" endings feel Gross, so it's not polished, with fluff for dessert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:47:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22141270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRatsAreListening/pseuds/TheRatsAreListening
Summary: Sean crosses the border. Daniel stays behind. It's fine. He's with Claire and Stephen. It's fine. It was his choice. It's fine. He said "Don't turn back". It's fine.About a year later, Finn finally comes to visit, and Sean discovers that, actually, it's not fucking fine.But maybe it'll get there.
Relationships: Sean Diaz/Finn
Comments: 14
Kudos: 87





	Give it time

**Author's Note:**

> So, because there's no way for me to not feel absolutely horrible no matter what ending I get in this game, I went for Parting Ways (Finn) and then turned it into a therapy session. for both myself and Sean. Yay!  
> An original novel I've plotted out in detail generates no interest in my stupid fucking brain, but the second I feel a little gross about an emotionally demanding piece of media, suddenly it wants to produce over three thousand words in a single day. Love it.  
> And if the optimistic ending feels like a cop-out to you, too bad. I wrote it to cheer myself up.

"Hey, what's the matter?" Finn asked, placing a hand on Sean's shoulder to stop him walking so far ahead.

Hesitant waves were creeping up the beach and receding just before they reached them. It was beautiful out there, even if a little cold, and by all accounts, they should definitely have been enjoying this quiet moment on the empty beach. But Sean had been acting off for a while now, and it seemed to get worse every day. Finn was left to wonder if he'd done something wrong. He'd sort of expected his arrival to make Sean happy, or happier, or at least less lonely, but he seemed to be drifting farther and farther away.

"Nothing," lied Sean, again.

Finn couldn't find it in himself to be upset about it, even though he could tell. Sure, honesty was nice and all, but lies were also a method of genuine communication, especially when the people involved didn't try to sell them very hard, and at this point, he'd take anything, because at least this way he got to pick up on clues from the way in which he was being lied to. Sean's voice was quiet, and he said it softly, almost like an apology. He wasn't scolding Finn for asking, wasn't shutting the matter down, wasn't being harsh or cold, or even properly distant, even though he did seem to be miles away. It was like a hand pressed against a window when you're on the wrong side. I would reach you if I could.

"C'mere, sweetheart," he said, pulling Sean against his chest. The empty coconut shell in his hand, an impromptu cocktail glass until about ten minutes prior (because even when he felt like shit, Sean would find some small, stupid way to make him happy every fucking day, and of course he remembered) fell onto the sand, and so Finn could wrap both arms around him. For a second, he wasn't even sure Sean was breathing.   
Because he wasn't. When he finally did, it came out all broken up and shaky.

"I fucked up, man."

Finn didn't say anything. He just gently lowered them both to the ground while Sean tried to catch his breath. Standing up didn't seem like a sustainable practice, given what he guessed was about to happen.

"We were supposed to make it through _together_."

Ah. This was about Daniel. Finn still remembered getting the letter, a little over a year before. Sean had been in Puerto Lobos two months by the time he finally got around to writing it. It had said that he'd made it across the border, but that Daniel had chosen to stay behind and live with his grandparents, and little else. Finn would've gotten on the first available bus to Mexico, but he still had to wear the stupid orange jumpsuit for another while, and so they'd written back and forth as often as possible, but he'd never really gotten the entire story from Sean. Written communication offered too many opportunities to change your mind about saying something, especially when it probably needed saying.

It made him wonder what was bringing this up a year and a half after the fact. He suspected "nothing". He suspected it didn't need "bringing up" because it had never really been put away.

"You said he chose to stay, when you wrote," he pointed out, trying not to sound too confused.

"He just _jumped out of the fucking car_ , Finn!" Sean choked. His voice sounded hollow.

"Damn."

"After all that. We were almost across. He trashed all the police cars, so nobody could've really come after us for a while. And he just said "I have to go, don't turn back", and wrecked the gate to let me through, and then jumped out of the car. And I just kept driving, like a coward."

  
Holding on to him tighter was not going to help with how much Sean was shaking. But at this point, Finn was doing it for his own sake.

"He's okay, though, right?" He asked, trying his best to be gentle. "He made it. And your grandparents seem nice, and he got to go back and see his friend, Chris. He got a dog for Christmas! You didn't just leave him behind to fend for himself. He's okay."

"He's still going to have to go to trial for all the shit that happened when he turns sixteen."

"I know. And it's stupid. But they don't think he's guilty of the actual murder, so they'll go easier on him than they would have on you. Plus, he wasn't even ten yet when shit started going south. They're gonna have to take that into account. The crap that happens to you when you're a kid can literally change your fucking brain."

Sean's posture stiffened and he began pulling away. Finn knew exactly what he'd said wrong, without needing it pointed out.

"Fuck, I didn't mean it like that. Hold on."

"But you're right." He was sitting upright now, looking absently at an empty shell sticking out of the sand. "I messed him up, and none of that will ever go away. I made him have to carry all this weight, all this shit that he should never have had to put up with! And then I just left him there. Who cares if I did my best, if it wasn't good enough?"

"I do," offered Finn, without hesitation, his voice warm. "Because your definition of "good enough" is fucking bullshit, love."

Sean looked up at him, his eye red, tears streaming down his face. He seemed like he wanted to scream. But he didn't. He just sat there, staring. Finn felt kind of like he was being dared to push it, to be stupid, to fuck it up. Well. Who was he to say no?

"Who the fuck out there would've done better than you? I don't know a single --"

He was cut off by an absolutely heart-wrenching noise, something between a scream and a pained howl. For a second, Finn couldn't even process that a sound like that had come out of Sean, who had thrown himself back and covered his face with his hands, almost like he was trying to gauge his other eye out, too.

"Damn, Diaz," he said, so thoroughly disarmed by what had just occurred that he simply had no better way to manage the tension. "Didn't think you had it in you."

Sean pulled himself up, almost violently.

"It's you! _You_ did better than me. You pretty much became his brother when I wasn't looking!"

Finn sighed, but not in frustration or anger. He was... sad, more than anything, really. It was hard, seeing someone you loved walk around with a wound you knew nobody could close.

"I know you feel bad that he and I hung out a lot, but listen. I got to be the cool one because _I wasn't responsible_ for Daniel. Just look at the crap I got him into! _You_ would've never done something that dumb if I hadn't talked you into it." There was still a hint of guilt in his voice at that, and it seemed to cause Sean's anger to flicker. "If it had been me out there on the road with him, he wouldn't have lasted a month." He reached out to cup Sean's face in his hands, and wiped his tears away. " _I_ would've fucked him up. _You_ raised a good kid, who doesn't want to use his powers to take revenge for the world of hurt that he suffered, even though it would be the easiest fuckin' thing in the world. _You_ raised a kid who is going to be okay."

"He deserves better than okay," Sean whispered.

"Yeah. He does. And so do you. It just wasn't really an option. You would've had to build it from scratch, and you had nothing to build it with."

It was almost fifteen minutes after that before the crying stopped. Sean's face was hidden in Finn's hair, and Finn was stroking his back slowly, while he listened to his breathing even out. The front of his shirt was soaked, and around the edges, where it had started to dry, the salt in Sean's tears had crystallized into a white powder. It looked a lot like it had washed ashore after spending a day floating about in the ocean. There was something kind of beautiful about that.

"Okay, I'm pretty sure you single-handedly raised sea levels by about an inch today... Global warming has nothing on you -- Wait. Single-eyed-ly?"

"Shut up," Sean mumbled into his shoulder. He both did and did not want to laugh. He gave him a playful shove, and Finn toppled over dramatically, but made sure to take him with, and then they were both flat on their backs.

"You don't seriously believe that's ever going to happen."

They lay in silence for a while, and then Sean rolled over to watch him, sand crunching underneath him as he moved. Finn reached for his hand without looking.

"He chose to stay behind, I know that. Sure, he's just a kid, but I'm kind of done pretending my decisions are any more informed than any he could make. It continues to occur to me that I don't know shit."

"Yeah. It's like that sometimes."

"But..."

"No..."

"Finn. Really. We were sitting there, in the car, surrounded, and I had no idea what the hell to do. So I told him what would happen if we just gave up, and he was telling me that he didn't want us to be separated. That's why I said we should force the border; so they wouldn't take him away from me."

"I'd've done the same thing." 

"So why'd he leave? 'Cause it just feels like when I told him to get us through, plow through all those cops and never know if he'd hurt or killed any, it turned me into a person that he realized couldn't be part of the life he wanted, even if the alternative was bad too."

"Maybe." Said Finn, after a moment of careful consideration. His eyes were tracking thin ribbons of cloud across the violet sky, but he wasn't really registering them. "That might actually be okay though."

"How the fuck is that okay?! How could it _ever_ be okay?"

"Sometimes, you gotta do things for the people you love that turn you into someone they don't know how to live with. And then they do it anyway, 'cause they feel like they owe you, and they let it make them miserable. It's kinda cool that he knew better, and trusted himself to make that call, even though it's gotta hurt like nothin' else. It's a hard thing to teach a kid, I'm proud of you for pullin' it off. Besides, people change. You could loop back around to being someone he needs, someday. Give it time."

Sean looked as if, for half a second, he was actually entertaining the idea of being comforted by that. But then it fell apart. 

"Like I'm ever gonna be anything other than the outlaw brother he never sees anymore. Sometimes I wish I'd just turned myself in. Then I could serve a sentence and come out and be free. Everyone seemed to think I should. David, and Joey, and Agent Flores..."

Finn got up so abruptly that it got Sean to flinch.

"For a crime you didn't commit? Fuck that shit, man. It's not worth it."

"It'd be worth being able to be around him." 

There was a lingering sadness in his tone that sounded like it might just never go away, but at least he wasn't crying anymore. Finn's heart was breaking for this boy, it really was. He understood it all so much better than Sean probably gave him credit for, and he didn't think Sean was wrong to feel that way. There probably wasn't anything in the world that might ever change his mind. But he couldn't just leave it at that.

"Sean. Once you go to jail for something, you're never really free again. It changes how the system sees you, especially if you don't look like me. And maybe a life of being treated like you're subhuman and having to pretend to be grateful for the fact that some of it is only subtext is still worth it to you, for Daniel's sake. But I don't know that he'd get anything from it, except for the idea that _legal_ means _good_ and _illegal_ means _bad_. You're not a criminal, man. You did what you had to do. You didn't hurt anyone who didn't hurt you first, and it's not your fault that everyone was out to get the two of you."

Sean seemed overwhelmingly unconvinced. Finn hadn't been aware that he'd been trying to "win" this conversation until it became clear that he was losing it. And he was, perhaps not entirely rationally, scared that he'd lose Sean with it, too. He took a deep breath, and tried not to sound like he was panicking.

"Fine. Okay. Go to jail, serve time, be released in like, 2038! And then what? You wanna be there for your baby brother, now, but by the time you're out, he just won't be that person anymore. You can't save the Daniel who's out there right now, and he doesn't need saving. I know you know that." 

"I hit the hospital guard in the head with a metal pipe," Sean said. He sounded like he found it really funny, somehow, if only as an "aha, gotcha" moment.

"Feel like my point still stands," Finn tried to joke. "Dude was a dick." He knelt next to Sean and pulled him up by the hand, which he then pressed against his own chest, where his heart was going like a drunk drummer who couldn't count. "Can you at least wait until the statute of limitations expires on all the non-murder stuff? That's less than five years, and then they probably won't be able to pin the murder on you anyway, since you didn't even touch the guy!"

"Statute of limitations doesn't apply to fugitives from justice," came the dry response.

"Shit. You're right. I knew that. I'm grasping at straws."

Sean seemed to catch onto the fact that Finn had lost his cool, and made an attempt to comfort him, stroking his cheek with his free hand.

"It's okay," he promised, unconvincingly. "Don't freak out on me, we're just... Talking. I don't know what came over me, I was fine for so long. Maybe I just didn't _wanna_ fall apart 'cause I knew I wouldn't have a clue how to get back up if I did, and I'm not sure I would've even bothered to try. I have no idea how I held it together for a year, it's a fucking blur." That had to be one of the scariest things Finn had ever heard him say. "Since you got here, I guess, I've just been feeling safe enough to let go a bit, and it crept back up on me. I'm sorry."

"Fuck." Finn drew in a slow breath, thankful that Sean seemed to be looking down and probably couldn't see him blinking away tears. "Don't you ever say sorry for something like that." 

He wished he had a fucking clue how to put into words the fact that being able to make someone feel safe, to make Sean feel safe, after everything that he'd gone through, meant the world to him. It just didn't really happen. He wasn't the person people usually got their sense of comfort from, at least not for long, and to be that for someone, even for a minute, he just had no words for how good that felt, even if everything else happening around that revelation. from an emotional point of view, was best described as vaguely awful. 

"I love you, alright? So, so much, and I'd do this again, and again, and again, every single day until we both turn to dust. You don't know what it means to me that I even _can_. That you'd want me to. I just can't take you goin' to jail for no fucking reason. Makes me wanna throw up."

Finn couldn't tell what it was, but something definitely did change after he said that. He could feel it in the air, kind of like the barely audible humming noise Daniel's power made.

"Yeah," exhaled Sean after a while. "Okay." Finn wasn't sure what the hell that was supposed to mean. Okay, he wouldn't turn himself in? Okay, he'd stop apologizing? Okay that Finn loved him? At least _something_ was okay. That had to count as a win, even though he still felt like a live wire. "Maybe there's a way for him to come visit me when he grows up a bit, without getting in trouble over it. Dunno." He didn't seem convinced, but he was trying. "You said "give it time". Maybe you're onto something."

"Here's to hoping. And I meant everything I said, so you know."

"I know. I love you, too, I just hope we're not actually going to be doing this every day. I'm not loving the headache, and I think there might be a reason why they don't put sand in hair masks."

"Oh, you've got _jokes_ ," Finn chuckled. 

He was pretty sure Sean would have had to have been deaf not to hear the relief in his voice. The last hour had felt kind of like everything was going to forever be drowned in this sort of psychological smog that "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios always left behind, no matter which choice you made. Rationally, he knew things like these would always turn out okay, even when he couldn't see how. "Walk in a straight line until you hit a wall, and then scoot along it until it's not there anymore" was his strategy for these sorts of things. But it worked much better when he was alone, or with people like Cass, who were also one hundred percent comfortable just going into things blind. With Sean, who needed and deserved the certainty, it was hard not to feel like this might have been the wrong way to do it. It was hard not to feel guilty about not having a goddamn map and a flashlight. 

"I'll help you wash it out, if you want."

"Yes, you will," Sean smiled, and then pulled himself up to his feet, holding a hand out for Finn. "After which, I would like to eat an irresponsible amount of junk food."

Finn grabbed the discarded coconut and let Sean help him up. "Amen." He wrapped an arm around Sean's waist, squeezing him into an approximation of a hug that allowed them to keep walking.

"You alright?"

"Me? I should be asking you!"

"I feel a little less like crap. You helped a lot, it just seemed like you were having a hard time with it."

"I was," Finn confessed, in a small voice. "But it's okay now."

"Good. I don't wanna fuck you up, too."

"You're not fucking anyone up. You can shut up with that nonsense of your own free will, or I can shut you up myself."

"Pretty sure that'll get you the opposite result," Sean laughed. "I'm not even gonna consider raising a dog with you if you can't get a grip on positive reinforcement, man, sort your shit out."

"Smart-ass. You might be playing the dog card too much. And maybe I didn't mean what you think I meant."

Sean made a noise like he was considering it, and then shook his head side to side. "Nope. Confident I'm playing the dog card exactly the right amount. And what am I supposed to believe you meant, that you'd punch me? Don't make me laugh."

"I _live_ to make you laugh. But also, I'm a hardened criminal, you know. I have tattoos and shit."

"You're like a puppy that got doodled on by an unsupervised toddler."

"Ouch."

"Kind of a hot look on you, to be honest."

"Glad they've achieved their purpose of appealing to pretty boys. Speaking of hot looks, I think I read somewhere that one of the oldest prosthetic eyes ever discovered was made of stone and painted gold. And I'm not tellin' you what to do, but that would look sick as fuck."

"Not sure gold is my color," Sean laughed.

"Honey, everything is your color."

"I'll think about it."

**Author's Note:**

> Does anyone else find it funny that I've been writing fanfic for months in the fandom my username references (Dishonored), which I've been part of and have been writing analyses of for years, and which was actually the content this account was MADE FOR, but this entirely unrelated oneshot is the only thing that ended up getting finished and posted?


End file.
